The Ancient Society Columnist #333

Life and Opinions of Mr Diogenes Laertius

Dear friends of Daily Philosophy,

I’m back home and I can finally sit down at my usual workplace — don’t imagine anything grand, I’m perching at the corner of my bed, with my laptop sitting on a four-storey rollable kitchen-cart. That’s Hong Kong living style. Since I’m telling you about it, and since today we’re going to talk about gossiping columnists, here’s an image of my workplace:

On the left side you can see the bed, on the right the wardrobe. The empty space between them is about a metre wide and a bit over two metres long, and that’s my whole home office and studio. Towards the back of the photo, you can see my video camera on a tripod and a big light box that I use for my videos. Obviously, there’s no space for a chair, so working is done from the edge of the bed, and the kitchen-cart/desk is just the right height for that. The rest of the house is taken up by various children and their stuff.

I’m not posting this to elicit sympathy or pity. This setup makes me happy. It pleases the Epicurean in me, and I’m actually amazed that since I’m working in this space of 2 square metres (20 sq feet for our non-metric readers), I’ve been more productive than ever. It’s here that I’m writing or editing an article every week for Daily Philosophy (and now two, with this new Ancient Greece series), record and edit a weekly video (except on holidays) and a podcast. This is in addition to my daily writing and editing of lecture notes and slides, occasional books or presentations, and whatever other publication opportunities come along. This setup has the additional benefit that it’s really easy to lie down in bed for a quick nap between assignments.

I have a much nicer desk at the university, obviously, but when I’m there, there is so much to do with teaching, organising, and meeting students that I rarely manage to write or record anything.

So, as I said, I’m happy and amazed at how well this setup works — but, of course, if you enjoy Daily Philosophy and you’d like to donate something towards me eventually graduating to a grown-up’s desk, you can take a premium subscription right here:

For some weeks now, I’ve also been creating a daily (except weekends) video on happiness. I think I mentioned it once in passing (at the beginning of July). The idea was that I wanted a more direct way to connect with an audience of non-philosophers who might be interested in philosophical ideas, and who might find this newsletter uninteresting, or too difficult or academic in content and tone. It was also, at the beginning, meant as an exercise in recording a daily video and learning how to speak more comfortably on camera. I found that I had some difficulty in recording a weekly video for DP, so I thought that if I make myself record daily, then making a weekly video would become much easier in comparison.

And it worked. I’ve managed to keep up the daily schedule for now 42 videos, except for weekends, a few days with Covid, and when we took our return flight from Greece. And it’s great fun! I call it the Daily Happiness Gym, because one is supposed to watch these videos as one would go to the gym — for a few minutes every day. It’s a hands-on, philosophy-based training in happiness, roughly along the lines of the year-long happiness series that you could read here on Daily Philosophy over the course of 2021 (you can find all those posts in the archives if you’re interested).

This new project has its own website and YouTube channel. The easiest way to get there is by using this link that contains all the videos and transcripts:

everydawn.com

Or look directly at YouTube for the videos only:

EveryDawn Youtube channel

As I’ve said before, this is not academic philosophy, although it is philosophy. It’s philosophy for life, and, finally, it allows me to claim the truth of the name of my little corner of the Internet: after many years, it has finally become daily philosophy — literally. Go have a look if you are interested, and make sure to subscribe!

And now, let’s go on to today’s article. Before we start talking about Thales and the others, you might have wondered, how do we know so much about those ancient philosophers and their lives? For example, who would give us information like that about the first Western philosopher:

It is said that once, when [Thales] was taken out of doors by an old woman in order that he might observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and his cry for help drew from the old woman the retort, “How can you expect to know all about the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just before your feet?”

That’s is your tabloid columnist from the year 200 AD speaking. Read on to learn about one of the most spectacular and entertaining histories of philosophy ever written!

Diogenes Laertius

Before we can talk about any of the ancient philosophers, we need to make the acquaintance of another man. Him:

This is Mr Diogenes Laertius, as he was imagined by an unknown artist in the 17th century. I very much disagree with painting him as a stern, unfriendly man, and here is why.